I didn't know it then, but it plunged
me deep into the business world of music for the next
45 years.
I had no mentors, no consultants and certainly no books
to offer me insights into the spiral onto which I had
just embarked…a spiral through seven managers in the
first five years and worse yet, signed 100% of my
songwriting publishing away before I had even written
my first song.

Changes in the industry.

The music business has changed dramatically
since that first contract was signed in 1965 as a member
of The Turtles, but many things still remain the same.
The incredible amount of stories I have personally heard,
telling of lost careers and lost human beings,
could fill a very large book.

For every successful story, there
are many more reflecting the outcomes of battered lives
left to fade away in the wake of misguided musical choices
and decisions.

Todays music business climate.

Today musicians, artists and songwriters
still sign agreements they do not completely understand
and the results of that turn the dream of success into
a battle of survival, not just as a musician, but as
a battle for life. Record companies, for the most part,
still function as a small cog in the much larger wheel
of the corporate structure and the musicians, artists
and songwriters are the oil that greases the cog in
the wheel.

Why would you ask me about your career?
What do I know that you don't? Find out ...

Plan for survival.

Many, I should say most artists,
have no idea of a long-range plan for survival, and the
idea of having a plan for a career is so far away from their
reality that most will find themselves signing one bad deal
after another…over and over again.

Plan for success.

The promise for success lays a foundation
for those bad choices and bad decisions just as it did for
me over 40 years ago, and continues for others today.